are between insignificant and, for the purposes of elliptical division, inconveniently situated objects.
Arabian Mansions of the Moon.—The small stellar groups characterizing the Arab “mansions of the moon” (manāzil al-ḳamār) were more equably distributed than either the Hindu or Chinese series. They presented, nevertheless, striking resemblances to both. Twenty-four out of twenty-eight were formed, at least in part, of nakshatra or sieu stars.[1] That the Arab was essentially a copy of the Hindu lunar zodiac can scarcely admit of doubt. They were divided on the same principle; each opened at the spring equinox; the first Arab sign Sharaṭān was strictly equivalent to the Hindu Açvini; and eighteen constellations in each were virtually coincident. The model of the sieu was, however, also regarded. Eighteen Chinese determinants were included in the Arab asterisms, and of these five or six were not nakshatra stars; consequently, they must have been taken directly from the Chinese series. Nor were the Greek signs without effect in determining the names of the manāzil,[2] the late appearance of which, in a complete form, removes all difficulty in accounting for the various foreign influences brought to bear upon them. They were first enumerated by Alfarghāni early in the 9th century, when the Arabs were in astronomy the avowed disciples of the Hindus. But, although they then received perhaps their earliest quasi scientific organization, the mansions of the moon had for ages previously figured in the popular lore of the Bedouin. A set of twenty-eight rhymes associated their heliacal risings with the changes of season and the vicissitudes of nomad life; their settings were of meteorological and astrological import;[3] in the Koran (x. 5) they are regarded as indispensable for the reckoning of time. Yet even this intimate penetration into the modes of thought of the desert may be explained by prehistoric Indian communication. The alternative view, advocated by Weber, that the lunar zodiac was primitively Chaldaean, rests on a very shadowy foundation. It is true that a word radically identical with manāzil occurs twice in the Bible, under the forms mazzaloth and mazzaroth (2 Kings xxiii. 5; Job xxxviii. 32); but the heavenly halting-places which it seems to designate may be solar rather than lunar. Euphratean exploration has so far brought to light no traces of elliptical partition by the moon’s diurnal motion, unless, indeed, zodiacal associations be claimed for a set of twenty-eight deprecatory formulae against evil spirits inscribed on a Ninevite tablet.[4]
The safest general conclusions regarding this disputed subject appear to be that the sieu, distinctively and unvaryingly Chinese, carmot properly be described as divisions of a lunar zodiac, that the nakshatras, though of purely Indian origin, became modified by the successive adoption of Greek and Chinese rectifications and supposed improvements; while the mandzil constituted a frankly eclectic system, in which elements from all quarters were combined. It was adopted by Turks, Tatars and Persians, and forms part of the astronomical paraphernalia of the Bundahish. The sieu, on the other hand, were early naturalized in Japan.
Astrological Systems.—The refined system of astrological prediction based upon the solar zodiac was invented in Chaldaea, obtained a second home and added elaborations in Egypt, and spread irresistibly westward about the beginning of the Christian era. For genethliacal purposes the signs were divided into six solar and six lunar, the former counted onward from Leo, the “house” of the sun, the latter backward from the moon’s domicile in Cancer. Each planet had two houses—a solar and a lunar—distributed according to the order of their revolutions. Thus Mercury, as the planet nearest the sun, obtained Virgo, the sign adjacent to Leo, with the corresponding lunar house in Gemini; Venus had Libra (solar) and Taurus (lunar); and so for the rest. A ram frequently stamped on coins of Antiochus, with head reverted towards the moon and a star (the planet Mars), signified Aries to be the lunar house of Mars. With the respective and relative positions in the zodiac of the sun, moon and planets, the character of their action on human destiny varied indefinitely. The influence of the signs, though secondary, was hence overmastering: Julian called them θεῶν δυνάμεις,[5] and they were the objects of a corresponding veneration. Cities and kingdoms were allotted to their several patronage on a system fully expounded by Manilius:—
Hos erit in fines orbis pontusque notandus,
Quera Deus in partes per singula dividit astra,
Ac sua cuique dedit tutelae regna per orbem,
Et proprias gentes atque urbes addidit altas.
In quibus exercent praestantia sidera vires.[6]
Syria was assigned to Aries, and Syrian coins frequently bear the effigy of a ram; Scythia and Arabia fell to Taurus, India to Gemini. Palmyra, judging from numismatic evidence, claimed the favour of Libra, Zeugma that of Capricorn; Leo protected Miletus, Sagittarius Singara.[7] The “power of the signs” was similarly distributed among the parts of the human body:—
Et quanquam communis eat tutela per omne
Corpus, et in proprium divisis artubus exit:
Namque aries capiti, taurus cervicibus haeret;
Brachia sub geminis censentur, pectora cancro.[8]
Warnings were uttered against surgical treatment of a member through whose sign the moon happened to be passing;[9] and zodiacal anatomy was an indispensable branch of the healing art in the Middle Ages. Some curious memorials of the superstition have survived in rings and amulets, engraven with the various signs, and worn as a kind of astral defensive armour. Many such, of the 14th and 15th centuries, have been recovered from the Thames.[10] Individuals, too, adopted zodiacal emblems. Capricornus was impressed upon the coins of Augustus, Libra on those of Pythodoris, queen of Pontus; a sultan of Iconium displayed Leo as his “horoscope” and mark of sovereignty; Stephen of England chose the protection of Sagittarius.
Egyptian Astrology.—In Egypt celestial influences were considered as emanating mainly from the thirty-six “decans” of the signs. They were called the “media of the whole circle of the zodiac”;[11] each ten-day period of the Egyptian year was consecrated to the decanal god whose section of the ecliptic rose at its commencement; the body was correspondingly apportioned, and disease was cured by invoking the zodiacal regent of the part affected.[12] As early as the 14th century B.C. a complete list of the decans was placed among the hieroglyphs adorning the tomb of Seti I.; they figured again in the temple of Rameses II.,[13] and characterize every Egyptian astrological monument. Both the famous zodiacs of Dendera display their symbols, unmistakably identified by Lepsius. The late origin of these representations was established by the detection upon them of the cartouches of Tiberius and Nero. As the date of inception of the circular zodiac now at Paris the year 46 B.C. has, however, been suggested with high probability, from (among other indications) the position among the signs of the emblem of the planet Jupiter.[14] Its design was most likely to serve as a sort of Ihema coeli at the time of the birth of Caesarion. The companion rectangular zodiac still in situ on the portico of the temple of Isis at Dendera suits, as to constellational arrangements, the date 29 A.D. It set forth, there is reason to believe, the natal scheme, not of the emperor Tiberius, as had been conjectured by Lauth,[15] but of the building it served to decorate. The Greek signs of the zodiac, including Libra, are obvious upon both these monuments, which have thrown useful light upon the calendar system and method of stellar grouping of the ancient Egyptians.[16]
Planispheres.—An Egypto-Greek planisphere, first described by Bianchini,[17] resembles in its general plan the circular zodiac of Dendera. The decans are ranged on the outermost of its five concentric zones; the planets and the Greek zodiac in duplicate occupy the next three; while the inner circle is unaccountably reserved for the Chinese cyclical animals. The relic was dug up on the Aventine in 1705, and is now in the Louvre. It dates from the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. The Tatar zodiac is not infrequently found engraven on Chinese mirrors in polished bronze or steel of the 7th century, and figured on the “plateau of the twelve hours”
- ↑ Whitney, Notes to Sirya-Siddhānta, p. 200.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 206.
- ↑ A. Sprenger, Z. D. M. G., xiii. 161; Bīrūnī, Chronology, trans. by Sachau (London, 1879), p. 336 seq.
- ↑ Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 1.
- ↑ “Orat. in Solem,” Op., i. 148 (ed. 1696).
- ↑ Astr., bk. iv. ver. 696 seq.
- ↑ Eckhel, Descriptio Nummorum Antiochiae Syriae, pp. 18, 25.
- ↑ Manilius, Astr., bk. iv. ver. 702–5.
- ↑ A. J. Peirce, Science of the Stars, p. 84.
- ↑ Journ. Arch. Soc. xiii. 254, 310, and xx. 80.
- ↑ In a fragment of Hermes translated by Th. Taylor at p. 362 of his version of Iamblichus.
- ↑ Pettigrew, Superstitions Connected with Hist. of Medicine, p. 30.
- ↑ Lepsius, Chronologie der Aegypter, part i. p. 68.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 102.
- ↑ Les Zodiaques de Denderah, p. 78.
- ↑ See Riel’s Das feste Jahr von Denderah (1878).
- ↑ Mém. de l’ Acad., Paris, 1708, Hist., p. no; see also Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 170; Lepsius, op. cit., p. 83; Fröhner, Sculpture du Louvre, p. 17.
